I did not really know what Jet Lag was… I thought it would be some sort of strange feeling that you have in the stomach when you reach a place faaaaaaar away from your place…Now I know what Jet lag is… It’s your body thinking you are in a different part of the world, while you really are somewhere else… Something like hardcore day dreaming!!! I thought it would be really tough to manage the sleep etc, however I feel quite ok right now and it’s almost 5 in the evening here… I am feeling only as sleepy as I do any evening at 5ish 🙂

However there is something that I think has really helped me here… and that has been my BPO Experience… for your convenience, lets call it the Call Centre Experience…

My shifts used to change every 3-4 weeks and I have worked at almost all hours of the day during my 3 years of Call Centres… and that really helps even today when I want to either sleep early, or wake up early, or not sleep at all, or sleep longer…

In addition to this, I this is how I feel that working in the BPOs has helped me immensely…

1. When you go through voice training, you are told that people can sense emotions when you are on the phone with them, and hence keeping your cool and maintaining calm is very important when you are talking to a customer… Over a period of time, I guess that becomes a habit to ensure that you have better phone conversations….

I usually don’t shout over the phone anymore, and my conversations are much better as compared to what it used to be before my calling experience…

Basically I have learnt to be more sensitive towards conversations which are not face to face…

2. My experiences with the customer service / technical support are better thanks to me spending a lot of time on the other side of the phone as well

3. The body can be aligned to any time food, any time sleep in quick turnaround time

4. I can understand the accents of a larger group of people than usual and my conversations with people from Europe and US are better than average…

5. My accent is on an auto-modification mode now… If I am talking to someone from the US I can talk like them and ditto in the UK too…. the bottom line is the MTI (Mother Tongue Influence) is less than average when I speak with people from various backgrounds… Have received many kind hearted compliments as well over the last many years thanks to this…

The above points are just of the few things that make you a better person. I am not giving the entire credit to the BPO industry, however for me personally, the changes have happened because of my time there…

Given a choice I would make calling necessary for everyone for at least 6 months when they start their career… If not anything else, it would at least make people realise what kind of hardships someone in a BPO goes through in terms of work, and its not only a life of night outs, drinks, smoke, and sex….